Hennops, the river of disease and death flowing through Gauteng

The day in early September when Coert Steynberg became severely ill after accidentally ingesting water from the sewage-polluted Hennops River had started out like any other.

He enjoyed his usual full breakfast that his wife, Ria, had cooked. The couple danced a little in their farm home in the scenic Hennops River Valley, as they did most mornings. They shared a few laughs.

Then Coert — who, at 76, was still active and in good health — drove with one of his employees to a friend’s farm to fill bottles with water from the nearby Hennops River, about a kilometre away, to flush their toilets.

Their water troubles had begun in August when their borehole ran dry during a heatwave. For drinking water, Coert filled bottles of clean water from a neighbour’s borehole. 

“He didn’t want to waste their clean water so he and one of our workers filled up several bottles full of water from the Hennops River for the toilets so that we don’t waste the good borehole water in this severe drought,” Ria said. 

They also ordered water every five days from Rand Water and from another water supply company, forking out R1 800 for 10 000 litres each time. This was used to fill several of the farm’s water tanks for their tenants and their livestock and to irrigate the fruits and vegetables Coert grew.

The Steynberg family had lived and farmed in the Hennops River Valley, a provincial nature reserve, for many generations. 

Coera, the name Coert was called by his community, had lived in the area all his life, mainly growing vegetables next to the river.

 “On that day [when they both fell ill], I wanted to make us some tea,” said Ria, who broke into tears as she recalled the sequence of events that led to her husband’s untimely death. 

“I asked Coert to please pick up one of the bottles, which are very heavy, so that I can make us some tea, which he did right away. He poured it into the kettle and I boiled it. 

“And when I tasted the tea, I said to him, ‘But it smells bad.’ I just took one sip. It didn’t taste good. I asked him if there is something wrong with the [neighbours’] borehole water but he said that the borehole has fresh water and it’s very good. He said that it is okay to drink, because he thought it was the water from the borehole.” 

Coert took one sip and then another. Ria saw him grimace. 

“He looked into the cup and he said: ‘Ja, there’s something wrong with it,’ and he picked up the bottle from which he poured the water into the kettle. I said that there’s something black at the bottom of the bottle and he looked at it, and as he poured it out into the sink, he said, ‘There’s something wrong with the water.’”

The couple determined that somehow one of the bottles filled with the polluted river water to flush their toilets was accidentally switched. Unwittingly, Ria had used this contaminated water to make them tea. 

“I got sick and Coert got sick,” she said. “My stomach started running as well as Coert’s. 

“We had two bottles of water for the toilet in our bathroom downstairs and we could not keep up with the water for the toilets as his stomach was running completely, as was mine. It just kept on running for more than a week; it was terrible.”

Coert had taken only two sips of the tea; Ria a single sip. 

“You can’t imagine the whole outcome of that,” she said. 

“That shows you the terrible condition of that water [in the Hennops River].”

After a week of severe stomach problems, Coert spent a weekend in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, with his daughter and her husband. 

Ria, who was also still sick, had travelled to Kleinmond in the Western Cape for her son’s birthday. 

“During the night [in Kleinmond] — and it’s sad and bad to say it as I’m a very proud kind of person, like Coert was — I woke up and found that my stomach just flooded onto all the bedding.

“It was terrible, it was just pouring from my body.”

But, in the few days that she was there, her son medicated her and gradually, she started to feel better. 

But Coert remained severely ill, so his daughter took him to the Groenkloof Hospital in Pretoria when he returned from Middelburg. 

He was isolated in a ward and put on an intravenous drip and released after three days. 

Ria said: “While I was in Cape Town, I had this call from one of our sons. ‘Ma, I think you must rather come home, Dad is not feeling so well.’”

She flew home immediately, and fetched Coert, who was “so happy” to be discharged from the hospital. They returned to the farm. 

“He was well for a day after being on the drip but his stomach was not cured. It started all over again. And when we got home, for another week or two his stomach carried on running.

“It was so terrible. We had no water, only the bottles that we had to fill up,” said Ria. “I had a couple of full bottles for the kitchen just to make us some food for the stuff that we could keep inside us.”

But then Ria soon fell ill again. 

“My stomach started running again in the 10 days I looked after Coert at the farm after he was discharged from Groenkloof. I lost 15kg during this whole ordeal.”

Ria, who described herself as a “very young” 72-year-old, had medicine to stop the watery diarrhoea but it served only as a temporary relief for them both. They also took medicine to counter dehydration.

Coert could only eat a fresh beef broth that Ria cooked for him. 

“Our bedroom was on the top storey and we have our bathroom there and he would go to the toilet during the night, up to five times, it was just pouring out of his body. 

“As he walked to the bed, I had to wash the floors with that water.

Ria said she could not clean his clothes because the washing machine could not work without water. All that she could do was to stuff all of his soiled clothes into plastic bags. 

And because there was no water to properly bathe or shower, Ria could only give them both “bird baths” after heating a little water in the kettle or on the gas stove. 

On 23 September, their children intervened and Coert was admitted to the Netcare Unitas Hospital in Pretoria early the following day.

After inserting a catheter, doctors were stunned to see that Coert’s urine was black. He was immediately transferred to the multi-intensive care unit, where he was kept in a ward separately from the other patients. 

“It took the doctors a couple of days with Ampath [the private pathology laboratory] to decide whether it was a bacterial infection or a virus,” said Ria. 

Coert was eventually diagnosed with clostridium difficile infection (CDI), a virulent toxin-producing bacterial infection that is highly infectious. His organs were failing and he was put on a dialysis machine to try to help his kidneys. 

Ria recalled how she would sit at Coert’s bedside showing him photographs of the young peaches, pomegranates and the crystal grapes that he had grown for them on their farm.

“I said to him, ‘Look, you are going to come back to the farm this year and you are going to enjoy all the fruit of your hard work.’ He just smiled.”

His condition took a turn for the worse after a gastroscopy was performed to treat swelling in his stomach on 4 October. 

“My husband only managed to say to me, ‘I want to speak to you about us.’ I said to him: ‘My dear, what is it you mean to tell me?’ 

“He kept quiet but just kept looking at my face with his pure blue eyes. I said to him, ‘Why are you looking at me in such a strange way?’” 

Those were the last words that they would say to one another. 

“He turned his head around and he died. It was so sad. I never realised that Coert was dying,” said Ria. 

“I still cannot take this inside me and it’s all due to that filthy stupid water in the Hennops. All that water is so polluted and my husband died of that polluted waterr that people are using as a toilet. I will tell you that and I will stick to that.”

Coert was buried in the large family graveyard on the farm. 

“My husband should have been here with me, because he was a completely healthy person,” Ria said. “He was 76 but he was so strong and energetic.”

The couple walked daily, danced often and were planning a sea cruise with friends. 

“We still climbed that mountain [in the Hennops River Valley] — part of the mountain belonged to him and he regularly checked the fences and the wire — and also just for the sheer pleasure of having a wonderful view from there and checking for the wild kudus.”

As a qualified builder, Coert had also built many houses for people living along the Hennops River. 

“He would crunch the biscuits for the tarts I made and cut up vegetables for me when I was cooking. We did everything together. We never even went to town without each other,” said Ria. 

“He was my best friend. I’m not the Lord, but I know it was not his time to go. He was not sick, there was nothing on this Earth wrong with my husband.” 

Water activist Willem Snyman said the tragedy of the Hennops River — which is one of the few and largest waterways in Gauteng and which crosses Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni — is reflected in the “death of Coert Steynberg, going from a river that is supporting so much life to a river of death”.

“It’s ironic that Coert was farming vegetables on the river for so long, getting that life out of it and the water was actually the cause of his death.”

Snyman runs the Fountain River Environmental Sanctuary Hennops (Fresh), a nonprofit organisation working to restore the Hennops ecosystem. 

“It’s crazy that in the last 10 years, the river has gone from such a vast life-giving force to something that is taking lives now. And I think Coert’s death is one of the few that we do know about.”

He wonders if more people have become ill and lives have been lost because “it is difficult to trace the symptoms back to the sewage pollution”. 

Less than a decade ago, the Hennops was still crystal clear and many households used this water, said Snyman. 

“The pollution has now become so heavy that most aquatic life has been wiped out and contact with the water is avoided. 

“In the Mooiplaas area, groundwater has already been polluted by the sewage in the river. 

“The E. coli levels in the Hennops are in their millions. The pollution is of such a magnitude that it’s really threatening all life. If you think of how dependent we all are on our freshwater to give us life, I don’t really think that we’ve got much of a future.”

Snyman said the water poses a severe health hazard and flows straight into the Hartbeespoort Dam, from where it is used for the irrigation of edible crops feeding millions of people.

Large volumes of raw sewage are also dumped straight into the Hennops from illegal housing along its banks.

The river is also a repository for “massive plastic pollution”, which is being washed downstream. 

“This is what Gauteng is doing as the largest industrial centre — we’re just sending our waste down to the rest of the country, into the sea, without really seeing or caring about the consequences,” said Snyman. 

“It’s mostly the councils that are to blame; the sewage farms are run by the municipalities and the plastic is supposed to be collected by the municipalities.” 

These services have collapsed and “we’re sitting with these problems that won’t go away. This absolutely callous pollution will stay in the aquatic environment.”

Snyman said the bigger tragedy is that it’s not only the Hennops River that is contaminated. 

“Probably all the rivers in Gauteng are in this state,” he added. 

The Hennops River Valley is a provincial nature reserve for critical biodiversity. “Now we’ve got this river of death running through here. All of the animals are drinking this water and are also getting affected, so it’s actually a massive ecological impact. The river is about 100km long coming from Tembisa; it’s literally killing everything along that route.”